The act of writing itself is done in secret, like masturbation.

Quiet people have the loudest minds.

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.

The water was glassy and calm, still candy-colored in the afterglow of sunset.

A life without love is like a tree without fruit.

The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

Outside, daylight was bleeding slowly toward dusk.

You can't deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.

People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.

The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there... and still on your feet.

I tell you such fine music waits in the shadows of hell.

I know my sister like I know my own mind, you will never find anyone as trusting or as kind.

My lyrics aren't offensive. Some people find everything offensive.

To sacrifice one's unhappiness for a good cause is something I fervently believe in.

Victoria's Secret is like a big family.

A horrid alcoholic explosion scatters all my good intentions like bits of limbs and clothes over the doorsteps and into the saloon bars of the tawdriest pubs.

It is splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your words and make them pop like chestnuts.

When others are not doing what we would like them to or are threatening disobedience, we are most conscious of the need of controlling them and of the influences by which they are controlled.

People suffer all their life long, under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But it is impossible for a person to be cheated by anyone but himself.

I'm trying to encourage my children's generation and the other ones coming to return to basic American principles.